


hold back the river

by runthemredlightsbabe



Series: pieces [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 03:03:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9415112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runthemredlightsbabe/pseuds/runthemredlightsbabe
Summary: “I’ve been delivering to this hospital a long time, you know. Mostly, I give the flowers to the cancer patients. Or the people in hospice. Or the children. It’s sorta fun, I get to put on these scrubs, they even have my name on the pockets, I get to pretend I’m a nurse, I get to bring flowers to people and make their day better. And you know, some of them really love it. They smile. Especially the little ones, or the ones who have been here a long time. They’re lonely, ya know? And it makes me sad, but it also makes me happy, because I get to make their day a little bit better. But uhh, I don’t usually bring flowers to the emergency clinic people.“Partly because they’re not here for very long. It’s usually stitches and recovery and then, off you go. Either that or, uhh. Whatever. Nevermind. But another reason I don’t like going is because the family is always there, ya know? And they all have these looks on their faces. All this guilt. Like it’s their fault. Like they coulda done something to stop it. And it makes me feel bad, because the flowers aren’t for the family, they’re for the patients, but sometimes it seems like the families are the ones who need them the most.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the lovely [Thorahathi](http://thorahathi.tumblr.com/post/146504523267/bokuto-is-all-lookwho-ive-metaaaa) Tattoo!Au. Please do something nice for yourself and check out her blog. And another shout-out to [crowswillfly](http://crowswillfly.tumblr.com/) because she's also seriously the best. Her playlist can be found on [8tracks!](http://8tracks.com/skihale/pieces)
> 
> Title from "Hold Back the River" by James Bay

This is what Akaashi wakes up to at exactly 5:13 in the morning:

-A pounding headache

-Aching bones

-A lady on the phone telling him that Kageyama Tobio is in the hospital.

 

It is a little after five twenty when Akaashi emerges out onto the street in his pajamas, clutching his phone to his chest, swept with _panic panic panic panic panic_.

(“Akaashi Keiji?” A tired and unhappy and middle-aged lady asks.

“Speaking,” Akaashi says, mostly into his pillow. He is so tired.

“I’m a nurse at Ikebukuro Emergency Hospital. I’m calling because you’re listed as Kageyama Tobio’s primary emergency contact.”)

 

It takes him exactly 7.3 minutes to reach the nearest train station. He paces up and down the platform, pulling his hair. There is an arthritic old man sitting on a bench across the platform with an equally arthritic old dog on his lap. They stare placidly at him.

(“He was attacked last night.”)

Keiji feels the terrible urge to scream that dogs aren’t even allowed on trains.

(“He’s in a bad way.”)

 

Keiji catches a glimpse of himself in the train window. He is wearing a pale yellow sweatshirt with a zombie dinosaur eating an alien (from his brother). His pants are fuzzy, and they have green stars on them. He has a black eye, and there are tear-tracks of eyeliner down his cheeks.

(“He asked for you.”)

No wonder the dog and the man were staring at him.

 

_“Hey,” Tadashi raps softly on Akaashi’s counter. Keiji looks up, spies the disconcerted look on Yamaguchi’s face. Sensing trouble, he sets down his pen. “You busy?”_

_“No, but I imagine I’m about to be,” Keiji wrinkles his nose. “It’s not Oikawa, is it?”_

_“Uh, no,” Tadashi says anxiously. “No, there’s someone asking for you.”_

_Akaashi raises an eyebrow. “I thought that was supposed to be a good thing.”_

_“Well,” Yamaguchi shifts. He looks sad. “You might want to come see for yourself.”_

_Akaashi understands Tadashi’s hesitation as he stares down uncomprehendingly at the young boy lurking in the doorway of Tinto de Cuervos._

_He can’t be a day over fourteen, with unkempt hair somewhere between ink and shadow. He’s tall, but unnaturally scrawny - thin and bony and hungry. His face is scrunched and smudged with dirt. There’s a layer of old bruises trailing the thin curve of his collarbone, half-hidden under an enormous bomber jacket. It might have been black and white once, but it looks like it’s been through hell and back, ripped at the sleeves and the elbows and the chest._

_He takes a half step back as Tadashi and Keiji approach, and from beneath his bangs emerge two frightfully blue eyes. They are sad eyes, Akaashi notices, haunted and ghostly and scared. He scowls, an automatic, avenging sort of look, all sharp ends and threat, feet planted, head angled up and proud and angry, but his eyes betray him. They are wide, young, and full of fear and desperation and hunger, of years of suffering and loneliness._

_Akaashi knows about the orphans of Tokyo. There are some cities that have wild dogs or giant rats or feral cats, but Tokyo has children. It is an unspoken problem, a unsightly travesty hidden for the most part from the public eye. The Horosha. The wanderers. Children left to roam the street, pick from the ashes, skeletons and ghosts._

_“This is Akaashi,” Tadashi introduces softly. “Keiji, this is the person who was asking for you.”_

_“Hello,” Akaashi greets, sidestepping the socially accepted formality. He watches the boy attempt to stand his ground and shrink away simultaneously._

_“I want a tattoo,” The boy says, a little too loudly. “I can pay.”_

_“I tried explaining to him that there is an age limit,” Tadashi says. “That he needs parental permission, but he won’t-”_

_“I’ll do it,” Akaashi says. “What would you like?”_

_He looks at the boy and sees the signs. Sees the nails bitten to the quick. Sees the skittish eye contact, the almost-invisible tremble to his fingers. Sees the way his eyes have sunk into his head from malnutrition and stress. Sees the fever pitch in his cheeks. Sees the hollow, helpless, tired ache in his eyes._

_He looks at the boy and sees himself. Sees Oikawa, sees the unused storage shed they kept as their home, the shredded blankets and dented cans of boiled fish and rice._

_“A name,” The boy says. “I want a name.”_

It is a twenty-three and a half minute train ride, and then a ten-minute walk to the hospital. Akaashi ends up running in old sneakers that don’t really fit, held together by tape and prayers. He violates about sixty social codes in the process, and he doesn’t apologize, not even when he knocks that young lady off the curb.

_The boy is stoic throughout the inking. He doesn’t flinch, doesn't whine or wriggle, turns his head, closes his eyes and clenches his jaw._

_Akaashi struggles._

_He had prepared. He knew that the boy would not be undamaged. There would be scars. There would be bruises. Some old and gray, some raised and ugly, caught in limbo between healing and reopening. Some fresh as new blood, bright red and loud. He knew that it would make his stomach curl, but he had promised himself that he would not react. The boy’s life was not his own._

_In all his preparations, he hadn’t expected the burns._

_The boy is a latticework of red. Some are small. Round. Perfect circles behind his ear. At his shoulderblades. His sternum, his ribs._

_Some are thin, light, like the impression of a kiss, unlined and scratchy. His throat. His elbow. His fingers. His wrists._

_And some are like open mouths. They are raw, they are infected, they are enormous, they weep as he shifts. His arm. His ribcage. Down his back. Akaashi counts them like breaths._

_His fingers tremble as he swabs the spot above the boy’s heart with alcohol. The boy doesn’t react, but Akaashi is acutely aware of the serrated edges of the swollen wounds at the gap of his collarbone and neck, and wishes he didn’t know how much the alcohol hurts as it eats at the delicate scabbing._

_“What’s your name?” He asks suddenly, because he doesn't like the silence anymore._

_“Doesn’t matter,” The boy replies. “You’ll never see me again.”_

_Akaashi does not stop his work, but he sighs. “That’s not really the point.”_

_The boy does not respond._

_Keiji tries to confine himself to silence. He is usually very good at that. Most of the time, he sits and listens and they will talk and he will not to respond._

_But then he presses down with his needle, and the boy ducks his head, and the words don't stop._

_“My brother used to come home with bruises,” Akaashi murmurs on half a breath. The boy does not respond, but his heart beats. “He’d come home with bruises and cans of boiled fish and a smile on his face. He’d sit down next to me, and let me clean him up. Not because I knew how. Not because I helped. Because I didn’t. In fact, I’m fairly certain he always redid the bandages when I fell asleep. But he let me fix them because he knew it made me feel better. Like I was doing something to help us._

_“He was the best big brother I could ask for. We ran away together, when he was fourteen and I was eleven. Actually, he ran away. I came with him. I don’t think he would’ve left without me. He loved me too much. But that’s how he was. The first time he stole, it was for me. It was melon soda. He stole it because I told him I’d never had any, and he didn’t have any money. He was really good at stealing things. He still is. It’s because he’s so charming. He could be caught red-handed and still talk his way out of it._

_“That, and he’s ridiculously good-looking. Not that I’d ever tell him that, his head is about fifty kilograms already. But he’s beautiful. And charming. And smart. And so kind and generous. He always put me first. Always. Even when all I could do was cry and bandage his fingers wrong.”_

_The boy is quiet._

_Akaashi keeps talking._

_“Eventually, I figured out we’d never make it if I kept letting him take on all the responsibility. He spent most of his time working. Selling, mostly, to criminals and latchkey kids. I don’t know how he managed. He was so young, they should’ve eaten him alive. But that’s how he is. He’s a miracle._

_“I wasn’t worth much back then. I wasn’t especially bright. I could read and write and I knew my arithmetic, but that doesn’t exactly help when you’re starving. I wasn’t charming, not at all. I was small. I didn’t know how to talk to people. But you know, I had always noticed how much people watched when I walked by. Men looked at me. They noticed me. And I realized that they would pay a lot to notice me more.”_

_There’s a long beat of silence._

_“Why are you telling me this?” The boy asks._

_“I don’t know,” Akaashi leans back, inspects his work. Inclines in again to fill in a line. “I don’t know your story, kid. I don’t know where you came from, or where you’ve been, or if you can relate to what I’m saying. I don’t even know your name. I don’t know where you found the money to pay for this. But I do know what it’s like to feel so totally helpless that you stop caring about what happens to you. I know what it’s like to be so horribly alone that you start wishing you could lose yourself forever. And-”_

_“And?” The boy presses, quiet quiet quiet, as Akaashi sets down his tattoo gun, lets the boy’s ghost-blue eyes drift like flotsam to his face._

_“And,” Akaashi says, “You’re finished.”_

_It sounds lame. It is lame, but he can’t find a way to say “I can help you"._

_“Really?” The boy sits up, eager to touch the ink branded to his skin. Akaashi reaches out to intercept, but he moves a little too fast. The boy startles like a new rabbit, shoves himself off the table, and two feet out the door, shirtless and scared. Akaashi feels sick._

_“Hey,” He says, softly. “It’s okay.”_

_“Don’t touch me,” The boy snaps._

_Akaashi refrains from pointing out that inking wasn’t exactly a hands-off process and that he’d been touching him for the past half-hour. He holds up his hands in quiet surrender and waits for the boy to stop panting. He does eventually, black pupils shrinking away. His fear retreats like a ghost in the morning. He closes his_

_eyes, breathes out deep and slow. He looks weary, wary, drained, broken. “Sorry,” He mutters. “Sorry, sorry.”_

_“Don’t,” Says Akaashi, as the boy puts his head in his hands, grabs his hair and yanks hard. “Please stop hurting yourself. It’s okay.”_

_The boy drops his wrists, looks loudly at Akaashi._

_He’s so young. So young to have so much hatred and anger and fear in his child-wide eyes. “Can I go now?”_

_“Bandages,” Akaashi holds out a swath of gauze. “For the ink.”_

_Neither of them talk as Akaashi wraps the thin kanji (Shoyo, it says, and he does not ask) and the burns. The boy does not protest, just ducks his head obediently as Keiji cleans the scarred flesh with cotton._

_“You said you didn’t know how to heal,” The boy says, when Keiji finishes._

_“I was nine,” Akaashi throws him a sardonic look. “I’ve grown a little since then.”_

_“Bummer. I was planning to sue you for malpractice.” The boy is totally deadpan, totally contained, but he looks at Akaashi and Akaashi knows he’s joking, and it is so outstandingly hilarious that he bursts out laughing. The boy startles again, looks bewildered and confused. And then he smiles back._

_(“Kageyama,” The boy tells him, right as they part ways. “My name is Kageyama.”)_

 

The young man at the desk asks his name. It takes 1.02 minutes to get the kanji right.

In the elevator, a man in a wheelchair tells him he needs to hydrate more. He tells the man to stick his advice up his ass. The elevator door opens before he can feel remorse.

Kageyama’s room is down a row of ugly paintings. If Noya was with Akaashi, he’d probably get angry and punch something. He was like that; mellow and chill and then inexplicably enraged. 

He enters Kageyama’s room, and the room gets all fuzzy and he has a hard time thinking clearly and wow, how is he supposed to breathe, again, because he can’t seem to remember and his body appears to be shutting down.

Kageyama is lying like a corpse. His skin is sallow, pale, sapped of color. It makes his hair look darker, makes the bags under his eyes deeper. There are _things_ attached to him- lines of dripping fluid and dark blood and a grainy monitor projecting his life algorithms on a numbed screen. He is not awake, and Akaashi feels his knees give out beneath him.

The doctor comes in, a man, not old and not young, who lets out an unstoppable flow of concerns at Akaashi’s well-being as he helps Keiji off the floor. He doesn’t stop, and Keiji really wants to hit him or maybe just yell at him because _Kageyama is unconscious and you’re worried about me?_

The doctor tells him in condescending Japanese that Kageyama was found unconscious and bleeding to death in an alley across the street from Tinto de Cuervos at approximately 4:23 am. He was brought to the emergency hospital in critical condition, suffering severe blood loss from a dozen lacerations. His wounds have been sutured, he’s had three blood transfusions, and as of now, he remains in critical condition. From the diameter and depth of the wounds, they suspect knives. The police have been notified and will arrive shortly after Kageyama wakes up. Does Akaashi have any reason to suspect foul play? Does Kageyama have any known enemies or people who have threatened to hurt him?

“I don’t think so,” Akaashi says, and the words are bitter. It’s a half-lie; he knows of dozens of people who’d gladly stick Kageyama like a pin cushine, but he comes up empty when he weighs them against the circumstances.

When the doctor opens his mouth to ask more invasive questions, Akaashi wonders aloud if he’s also an undercover cop, and the doctor changes tactics. “How are you related?”

What a terrible question.

“We’re not. I adopted him.”

That’s a lie, too.

 

_Akaashi isn’t expecting to see Kageyama ever again. But Kageyama clearly has other plans._

_Lurking a few doors down from Tinta de Cuervos. On the subway car to work and back home again. Sitting across the street from Akaashi’s favorite matcha store. It’s like having a personalized shadow, or maybe a guard dog, because that’s what Akaashi figures the boy is doing. He suspects he’s the only one who notices; Kageyama doesn’t even notice him noticing, which is convenient for when Akaashi needs to lose him. Every few nights, he gets a call. Every few nights, he puts on black stockings and dark lipstick in his reflection. Every few nights, he drops an unwitting Kageyama off somewhere safe, somewhere well-lit and warm, somewhere that a boy can steal a pint of milk if he’s got his wits about him. Then he’ll walk with a straight face off into the night, phantom aches travelling up his spine._

_For a long time, Kageyama keeps his distance. A few months, perhaps, possibly more. Tourist season ends, Tinto de Cuervos becomes fractionally quieter, it becomes harder to lose oneself in a crowd._

_Kageyama appears at Akaashi’s doorstep at three am like a wraith. Akaashi lets him in, and the boy crumples to the floor._

_His ribs stand out like canyons, and he shakes with cold and with hunger in Keiji’s arms. He’s dressed in stinking jeans and corpse-like shoes and a slit-wristed jacket. His hair is clotted with mud, his skin is dusted and clings to his bones. He trembles and cries out when Akaashi picks him up._

_Akaashi carries him to the bathroom, places him directly into the bath, helps him take off his shoes (no socks), his jacket (no shirt), his pants (no boxers). He fills the bath to the brim with hot water, leaves Kageyama resting against the edge, hands outside the water. Akaashi tosses the clothes on his bedroom floor, finds a pair of sweatpants and a flannel shirt and plain red boxers._

_Kageyama’s head has slipped under the water when Akaashi returns, and Keiji is caught in such a terrible, cold panic that they’re both gasping for air when he brings Kageyama back to the surface. Kageyama spends the time zoning in and out of consciousness. Akaashi cleans his hair, his scalp, his chest and legs and hands._

_The water drains scarlet and brown and gray, and Akaashi helps Kageyama out of the tub as blood trickles from the burns and cuts._

_He gives the boy boxers and two towels and leads him into the kitchen. Kageyama drips water and blood everywhere as Akaashi sits him down on the hard floor, puts the kettle on, rustles through his cabinets for gauze and hydrogen peroxide and tape and tweezers._

_"You have lice,” Is the only thing Akaashi says. Kageyama does not respond, because he is unconscious again. Keiji lets him sleep, treats his back and arms and chest and ribs and ears and neck and face and stomach and knees and legs for blood and bone and bruises. He treats the lice too._

_Then he wakes Kageyama up, lets him pull on sweatpants and the flannel shirt and then a heavy yellow-and-white striped sweatshirt over that. The boy is almost Akaashi’s height, but he is as thin as paper._

_Akaashi gives him tea and has him sit on the beat-up couch with a hot water bottle and a blanket. Then he looks in his fridge, sees eggs and some old cooked chicken, some rice and soy-sauce._

_He makes yaku-don, except the chicken is already cooked, so it’s a little weird, but when he sets it in front of Kageyama, the boy inhales it all within a few heartbeats. He eats almost everything Akaashi puts in front of him- more cooked eggs, more rice, sliced carrots, some old edamame, some older fish cake. Akaashi makes himself a cup of tea, and they sit side-by-side._

_“I’m tired,” Kageyama says, and there are so many double and triple meanings behind him that Keiji lets several heartbeats go by, just thinking. Kageyama’s hair has dried, it sticks out like fuzzy pine needles. It makes him look wild. Feral._

Tired. Tired of running. Tired of surviving. Tired of being lonely. Tired of waking up with nothing to fall for.

_“Sleep here,” Akaashi says._

 

Kageyama _is_ related to him.

He’s never thought of Kageyama as his son. Not as his nephew or his cousin. Not even as his brother. He is his roommate, his friend, his apprentice, his charge. But he’s also _family_ , the same way Oikawa and Noya and Tadashi are family. Blood doesn’t matter to Akaashi because that’s how his world works; there are no family trees, just people. Just _people_. He loves them unconditionally. Because that’s how Akaashi works. He gives his precious people _everything he has_. His bed, his house, his time, his effort, his hopes, his dreams, his love.

Kageyama came to him undocumented. He’d explained that he had a house. Not a home, a house, and Keiji’s heart had broken a little the way Kageyama had picked over his words. A mother and a father and two other siblings who disappeared. He didn’t know what happened to them, the girl and the boy, and he’d never asked. Apparently there wasn’t much asking in the Kageyama household anyway, just screaming and sticking fingers in boiling water when they broke a glass.

Will someone come looking for you? Should we have a story in place? Should we contact the authorities?

Kageyama had looked at Akaashi, given him a sad, sad, knowing look that was too old for his eyes, and said, “Do you really think that anyone will miss me?”

And that had been that. Or, that had been that for Kageyama. Kageyama, who didn’t have a first name, apparently. Had never been given much more of a title than “boy” and some other words Akaashi would rather not remember.

But Akaashi, who was seventeen at the time, who knew there would come a time when having an underaged roommate without any identification at all would cause trouble, went looking. He had one friend in the police force, and his name was Komi. They had become friends in high school sort of, and by sort of, Akaashi means that Komi sat down next to him in art class one day and decided to be his friend. He wasn’t close with Komi, or Komi’s numerous friends, Washio and Konoha and the one with the weird smile, but they knew each other enough that when Akaashi reached out to ask for help from his one friend on the police force, Komi got back quickly.

_There are ten people listed in Ikebukuro with the Kageyama name. Three of them are children, but none of them match your specifications._

So Kageyama was unregistered, and very likely undocumented at all. In fact, Akaashi was pretty sure he wasn’t even Japanese.

That hadn’t been a fantastic discovery, and Akaashi had intuitively known that it was bound to cause trouble. But he loved Kageyama. So he went looking again. 

He got the kid a birth certificate, got him some legal documents, got him a first name (Tobio, it meant to fly, it was unusual, Akaashi thought it fit him).

How did you find these?

"I have a friend on the police force. He pulled some strings.”

Actually, that wasn’t what happened at all. What had happened was Akaashi had other connections, and they had a high price, and Keiji had given them the one thing he had, because that was how Akaashi worked. He gave up everything for his family. But he wasn’t about to tell Kageyama that. Nor was he going to mention that all of the things in the envelope in his hand were fake. Kageyama had struggled his entire life with his identity. He deserved the comfort, even if it was a lie.

Kageyama wasn’t adopted, he was more or less stolen, not that Akaashi has any regrets, but that’s probably the closest word to describe what they’d done in legal jargon. And Kageyama is family. Akaashi’s family. And Akaashi loves his family unconditionally.

(There is a pattern forming here.)

 

Doctor Man leaves him after babbling what is probably some life advice from a man who smokes three packs a day and then leaves Akaashi with Kageyama. Alone.

Akaashi sits on the bed, like he’s seen people do in all the American hospital dramas that Oikawa has a particular fondness for. He takes Kageyama’s hand. He’s seen them do that, too, family members soft and clouded in grief.

He compares himself to them, in their perfect clothes and hair and lipstick and shoes, and thinks all those American directors should be fired. It’s so inaccurate, that pastel representation of loss, that Akaashi gets so irrationally, unironically angry at it. He feels like Noya and wants to punch something.

It _hurts_. It hurts like hell. There is nothing Akaashi can do but sit here and hold Kageyama’s stupid, clammy hand and hope, and when has hope ever fucking done a single thing in its damn life for Akaashi Keiji? He loves Kageyama unconditionally, but he’s here anyway, in this fucking hospital, listening to a fucking robot tell him Kageyama is still fucking breathing and feeling fucking terrified that every fucking breath will be his last. His fucking family. Seven billion people in the world, and _this_ is the one who is in critical condition.

“I have given everything,” He whispers into the empty room. “Please don’t take him, too.”

The thing is, this is probably his fault.

This is _definitely_ his fault, and he wants to strangle himself in Kageyama’s sheets. He wants to peel every inch of his skin off his bones, he wants to stand in front of an oncoming train and replace his life for the boy on the bed.

He was supposed to close up last night.

Instead, he’d gotten a phone call.

Tinto de Cuervos is open every day from about five in the afternoon to three in the morning, sometimes longer, often shorter. The employees work five-hour shifts five out of seven days, and are left mostly to their own devices. The three co-owners work eleven-hour shifts on a three-day rotation, and work six-hour shifts the rest of the time, for six out of the seven days. This is a complex system that functions about eight five percent of the time.

Nishinoya is a bit of a wild card because sometimes he’ll wake up and decide he’d much rather go track flock of pigeons from one end of the city to the other or paint a mural or whatever it is that he does instead of showing up for his shifts.

Terushima can only work a few shifts a week because he’s also pursuing a career in education at Tokyo University.

Most of them have other jobs, too. Yachi works at a bakery. Saeko has about five different part-time jobs with entirely different schedules. Kageyama is still seventeen and shouldn’t technically be working at all. He should also be in high school, but that is an entirely different subject, one that elicits no end of excuses and refusals and threats.

And Akaashi has his phone calls.

No one knows about them. No one knows what he does after work. No one knows he puts on ripped stockings and makeup and glitter on his cheeks. They don’t know, they don’t ask, because Akaashi has made it very clear that what he does in his time off is of no interest to anyone. Kageyama tried to follow him once, twice, ten thousand times, and Keiji had to lose him every time. 

He was supposed to close.

He should have closed.

He didn’t close.

He took the phone call at 12:54.

He took the phone call and went. Left. Promised he’d be back to close up. Before three. Promised to sit down with Kageyama and teach him how to draw hands for an hour, on the really nice sketch-paper Nishinoya kept using as a pillow. They’d close, and sit in the silence of three-in-the-morning and draw. That was his promise. And Kageyama trusted him. Because Akaashi was supposed to be the one thing in life that didn’t let him down.

And Akaashi left. Because he figured nothing would go wrong. Because he was in too much of a hurry following the sound of that voice to pause even for a second and consider. Consider the shitty neighborhood. Consider the violence they’ve normalized. A drug den’s a drug den, take it or leave it, and even if the guy in charge offers free gyoza, he’s still a drug boss. He still has guns and knives and blood on his hands, soaked through his shirt, his shoes. Ikebukuro’s cocaine clans have come calling, the underground world has never been more invested in making itself known. There’s more violence, more death, more bloodlust and desperation and money.

There’s a door in Tinto de Cuervos that doesn’t lock. Doesn’t have to lock, because who would steal from a stupid tattoo and body art shop run by a bunch of broke idiots?

And Kageyama is young and wise and so so stupid. Proud and angry and violent, just like the lot of them, he’s got a lion in his chest, and he’d attack back without thinking. Because he thought he would win. Could win. If they hadn’t been armed.

And Akaashi had gotten home, sore and tired and screaming on the inside, too wound up in his own fucking problems to figure out that Kageyama wasn’t home, wasn’t safe, was still fucking missing. He hadn’t even knocked on his door, hadn’t looked for his shoes.

Stupid. Fucking stupid.

Kageyama had been waiting for him as he fell into bed at two forty six in the morning. Kageyama had been waiting. He’d probably kept the store open extra long, just in case. All by himself. In the big open room, with crappy paper and an empty model. _Waiting for the one person in his life who wasn’t supposed to fucking let him down._

There are fresh bruises on the insides of his thighs. Akaashi finds them with his fingers and pushes down hard.

_My fault._

Harder.

Kageyama’s monitor chirps out a happy heartbeat.

Harder.

He should’ve gone back. Should’ve checked.

_Harder._

As the pain blots out black spots in his vision, Akaashi swears he can hear singing.

 

He wakes up with the same voice in his head, only he realizes as he remembers how to move his fingers, that it isn’t inside his head.

There’s someone sitting on the floor of the hospital room, Akaashi can just see the tips of their silver hair, and they are humming. Sitting on the floor. _Humming._

“Oh, hey! You’re awake! That’s great!” Some scrabbling sounds, fabric against linoleum tile, and it is Bokuto Koutarou of all people who was sitting on the floor of Kageyama’s hospital room, humming.

He’s dressed in blue scrubs and untied awful orange sneakers, and his hair is down and soft and gray-black-white. He stares at Akaashi with budding golden eyes, and Akaashi feels numb. “Wow! You don’t look so good.”

“Do you work here?” He says, mostly on autopilot. He’s really focused on the thin pulse of life he can feel through Kageyama’s clammed-up wrist.

“Nope!” A basket materializes in his hand, and he holds it out to Akaashi. “I just bring the flowers.”

“Flowers,” Keiji repeats uncertainly. He peers into the basket. There they are, wrapped in wet paper towel. Blue and yellow and red and pink and orange and white and indigo and peach. Something like horror clutches at his chest, and he throws himself bodily in between Kageyama and Bokuto. “Kageyama’s not dead! You can’t take him.”

“Hey!” Bokuto drops the basket of flowers. They land with a soft, leafy thud on the ugly linoleum tile. “I’m not saying he’s dead! I’m not, I’m not, I promise! I don’t give flowers to dead people! I won’t take him! I promise, Akaashi!”

It’s the look of sincere alarm on his wild, feral face that has Akashi lowering his hackles. The adrenalin rush leaves as quickly as it came, flushing his body. He feels numb again.

“Sorry,” He says.

“Don’t worry about it,” Bokuto sits down on the floor again. He’s much easier to handle way down low like that, looking up at Akaashi with gold-water eyes. “He’s your boy, right? Kageyama.”

Akaashi does not want to talk about this.

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

Bokuto ignores him. “I think I freak him out a little.”

Akaashi does _not_ want to talk about this.

“I can be a little much. You know, with my hair and my eyes and how tall I am. I look pretty weird. And I talk a lot. And Kageyama’s quiet. Well, like, I’ve seen him get really angry and yell. Especially at Oikawa, and that’s really funny. But I mean, the kid’s pretty quiet most of the time. I’ve seen him, though. He’ll sit somewhere and watch you. Like a cat, or maybe a dog.”

Bokuto has a funny way of speaking where he’ll stop and start and run his words together all at once or draw one out, and Akaashi wonders if he’s ever been to speech therapy. It’s sort of annoying.

“Like he doesn’t want you out of his sight.”

Akaashi stares out the window and wishes he was somewhere else. His chest feels tight. Pressured. “Please stop.” He whispers.

“And I’ve always wondered why he’s so attached to you. I know you’re not brothers or anything, and it’s kind of like what Oikawa has with Hinata, but Oikawa’s really a mother hen, so it’s also not. I guess… I guess I just get the feeling that he loves you a lot. Like, unconditionally. And I think maybe it’s because you brought a lot of unconditional love into his life, and he’s never had that before.”

Akaashi bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood. “Please.”

“I’ve been delivering to this hospital a long time, you know. Mostly, I give the flowers to the cancer patients. Or the people in hospice. Or the children. It’s sorta fun, I get to put on these scrubs, they even have my name on the pockets, I get to pretend I’m a nurse, I get to bring flowers to people and make their day better. And you know, some of them really love it. They smile. Especially the little ones, or the ones who have been here a long time. They’re lonely, ya know? And it makes me sad, but it also makes me happy, because I get to make their day a little bit better. But uhh, I don’t usually bring flowers to the emergency clinic people.

“Partly because they’re not here for very long. It’s usually stitches and recovery and then, off you go. Either that or, uhh. Whatever. Nevermind. But another reason I don’t like going is because the family is always there, ya know? And they all have these looks on their faces. All this guilt. Like it’s their fault. Like they coulda done something to stop it. And it makes me feel bad, because the flowers aren’t for the family, they’re for the patients, but sometimes it seems like the families are the ones who need them the most.”

Akaashi blinks at the morning light. It is still very early.

“I was supposed to give him drawing lessons,” He says softly. “I was supposed to leave and come back and give him drawing lessons. Instead, I went back to the apartment and fell asleep. I didn’t even remember. I didn’t even think about him. I’m supposed to take care of him. That’s my job. I have one responsibility. I’m supposed to _make sure he’s okay_. And I couldn’t even do that. I couldn’t even _remember_ to do that. How could this possibly not be my fault? How? How am I supposed to come out of this and not hate myself more than I already do? How is this not another line on the manuscript of ‘How Akaashi Keiji Manages To Fuck Everything Up? How am I ever supposed to even think of forgiving myself for _abandoning him_?”

It’s Bokuto’s turn to be quiet, and the silence that stretches between them gives Akaashi ample time to contemplate why he’s chosen to spill his heart to a mostly-stranger with eclectic hair, and decide he’s too miserable to care.

“I think you’re probably too hard on yourself,” Is what the boy with the golden eyes says. “I think you care a lot about people but you don’t care a lot about yourself, so you put out these walls, right? And it’s to keep everyone away, and you think it’s the same as protecting them, but all you get is a lot of dead flowers and rattlesnakes.”

“How is that an answer?” Akaashi snaps, fed up with the stupid boy in Kageyama’s hospital room. “How does that help with _anything_?”

“I just meant,” Bokuto waves his hands emphatically. “I meant that you assume the worst in yourself, and think everyone else should, too. Or at least, that’s what I’m guessing. It’s hard to read you, ya know. Your face has this way of looking like three different faces, and I can’t tell which one is the real you.”

“Please leave now, Bokuto,” Akaashi says. “Please go away.”

And Bokuto finally does. He gets to his feet, dusts off his pants. He touches Kageyama’s wrist, whispers a soft prayer in Korean, and then he’s gone.

There are two flowers, side by side, nestled in the palm of Kageyama’s hand, and Akaashi isn’t quite sure how they got there. One is pale, shaped like a delicate white bell, drooped on a spring stem. He recognizes it as a snowdrop, the first flower of spring.  _For hope_ , says the little tag of crumpled paper.

The second is bright yellow, and it has thousands of triangular petals. It smells faintly of spices.  _For precious people._

Bokuto sings down the hall, and Akaashi waits until he can’t hear the strange faerie melody.

He puts his head in his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> me@me: honestly, what the hell. 
> 
> come yell at me on [tumblr](http://iamtherabbitwhisperer.tumblr.com/)


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